Type Specimen / T-Star Pro Version 3.0, 2012 60 Pt. The Giro Type — Specimen binnenland.ch Passo Stelvio / Historic climb of the Giro d’italia 3 The nicknames / T-Star Pro Heavy The first Giro d’Italia / T-Star Pro Regular 60 Pt. 12 Pt. 1909, the first Giro d’Italia. On May 13, 1909, the Giro’s first peloton of 127 riders (41 of the enrollees didn’t show up) met at the Piazzale Loreto in downtown Milan where La Gazzetta’s offices Red Devil, were situated. The eight-stage race went from Milan to Bologna and onward to Chieti, Naples, Rome, Florence, Genoa and Turin, returning to Milan on the 30th. Riders would cover 2,445 kilometers over eight stages, an average stage length of 306 kilometers, the Fist, not far from the Tour’s average. This was to be the shortest Giro ever. It should be noted that in the early years of bike racing distances were approximate. The various lengths we have for the first Giro, 2408, 2448, and 2445 kilometers—each from a dif- ferent but respected Italian writer—are all within the expected and the range of accuracy of the age. To minimize cheating and confusion, each of the riders was King of Mud photographed at the start for later comparison by the judges. Just as in the first couple of editions of the Tour, the Giro would allow several days of recovery between each stage. The riders faced roads that could only be described as menacing, especially in economically disadvantaged southern Italy. Against the wishes of their sponsor Alcyon, several famous French riders, including Maurice Brocco, Émile Georget and Jean-Baptiste Dortignacq, signed up to ride the first Giro. The Alcyon bicycle company wanted them to ride the Tour of Belgium that May, which would give the French manufacturer far more usable publicity. Italy was a far more isolated country and performing well in an Italian race would not create much of a stir, and hence sales, back in France. This was long before the creation of the European Common Market. Back then high import duties between the European nations created isolated national markets. Despite this impedi- ment, the English bike firm Rudge Whitworth sponsored a superb squad with Carlo Galetti, Giovanni Cuniolo and Ernesto Azzini. The Alcyon riders entered under fanciful names like “Gingdt” and “Caliste”. The Giro organization dutifully reserved numbers for them, but in the end the riders crossed neither their sponsor 4 5 The first Giro d’Italia / T-Star Pro Regular The first Giro d’Italia / T-Star Pro Regular 12 Pt. 12 Pt. nor the Alps. While these gents didn’t travel to Italy, two great Tour The longest stage was the first, Milan to Bologna. Vittorio de France riders did: Lucien Petit-Breton, winner of the 1907 and Cavenaghi, the president of the Italian Cycling Federation, officially 1908 Tours, and Louis Trousselier, winner in 1905. The first Giro had started the first Giro peloton’s race into history at 2:53 AM. just five foreign riders actually start, the aforementioned pair plus A huge crowd sent the intrepid riders off by torchlight on a bottom- Frenchmen André Pottier and Maurice Decaup, and Henry Heller numbing 397-kilometer stage that would take the best riders from Trieste. The two most famous Italian racers at the Piazzale over fourteen hours to complete. The riders in that first Giro stage Loreto start were Luigi Ganna, nicknamed “The King of Mud”, and headed north out of Milan on the Viale Monza towards Bergamo, Giovanni Gerbi, “The Red Devil”. Gerbi was the more popular of the continuing eastward to Vicenza and then south to Bologna. The two among Italian race fans, or tifosi—a term derived from the Giro wasn’t even two kilometers old before the first mass crash delirium of typhus patients. In their devotion to their favorite occurred. No one knows what caused the riders to fall in the dark. athletes or teams, the tifosi were and are often fanatical, which Some said a child escaping his parents’ control ran into the middle is of course the origin of the term “fan”. Before Ganna became a of the peloton. But all were soon up and riding again except Gerbi. professional bike racer he’d been a stonemason who had to ride Swearing like a sailor—he was the Red Devil after all—he found almost 100 kilometers a day to and from work. Just racing a bicycle that his rear wheel and fork were in bad shape. He turned around must have seemed like an easier job. He won the 1907 Milan–Turin, and rode to the local Bianchi dealer who had stayed open because in 1908 he was fifth in the Tour de France and in the spring of 1909 of the large crowd of cycling fans filling the streets watching the he won the third edition of Milan–San Remo. Gerbi’s accomplish- Giro send-off. The mechanic was awakened and put to work on the ments were a bit more extensive including victories in the Tour of damaged bike and Gerbi soon rejoined the peloton. Tour de France Lombardy, the Tour of Piedmont and Milan–Turin. A modern profes- history fans may raise their eyebrows at that last paragraph. While sional bike race has a seemingly endless caravan of cars and trucks the Giro intended to follow the basic structure of the Tour, it had following it, some for team support and some for the race man- no intention of being a carbon copy. Desgrange ruled the Tour agement. The first Giro had an eight-car caravan: four cars for the with an iron-fisted despotism. He created a rulebook that seems teams, two for the organizers and race judges and two for sadistic today and was considered as such by many of the early journalists. The fundamental situation of many of the riders was Tour riders. His intention was to make the Tour a race so difficult profoundly different from today’s professionals. Today a racer has that it was almost impossible to finish. One of the early Tour’s most his race bikes maintained by skilled, professional mechanics. After important regulations said that the riders had to perform their the race is over he is sped to a hotel for a massage and a meal own repairs, without any assistance. A Tour rider whose frozen before going to bed. In the 1909 Giro the best riders riding for the hands prevented his being able to thread a needle so that he could comparatively well-financed teams could at least count on a bed repair a sew-up tire was penalized because a sympathetic woman in a hotel after a hard day’s racing. But many of the riders were had done only that, threaded the miserable rider’s needle. This unsponsored independents, receiving no salary and racing only for rule, which hugely magnified the consequences of a mechanical prizes and completely on their own. Some were merely unemployed, problem, in many ways turned the Tour into a race of chance. hungry and looking for a way out of poverty. They sometimes slept Several riders lost enough time getting their broken bikes back on outside, occasionally on haystacks or in abandoned houses. Theirs the road that it cost them likely victories. Over the ensuing decades was a difficult life without a hint of glamour. this cruel requirement was gradually relaxed. 6 7 The first Giro d’Italia / T-Star Pro Regular The first Giro d’Italia / T-Star Pro Heavy 12 Pt. 27 Pt. The early Giri were far fairer. While damaged bicycles could not be replaced, the rider could receive mechanical assistance. Each of the riders was The riders had enough to contend with between the era’s primi- tive metallurgy and the race’s staggeringly long stages over photographed at the start contemptible road surfaces. As with the Tour, the complex book of rules changed over the years as the race organizers tried to make for later comparison by the Giro as exciting, difficult, compelling and fair as possible. For a few years Giro rules also required the riders to make their the judges. own repairs. Stage racing was a new sport and the race organ- izers were learning on the fly. Tracking these seemingly arbitrary changes challenges the cycle historian who finds inexplicable time or point penalties assessed in these early races. In Bergamo the riders had to sign in at a checkpoint. Racing during the pio- neer era was rife with creative cheating and checkpoints were an attempt to minimize racer-authorized shortcuts and trips on trains. Chaos often ruled at the checkpoints of the first Giro. Before the Giro’s first real climb, an ascent near Lake Garda, two riders crashed. First Galetti went down and then Petit-Breton. Petit-Breton was eating a piece of chicken when he lost control of his bike and fell on his head, receiving a blow so severe he lost consciousness for a few minutes. Upon recovering and re -mounting, he thought he might have dislocated his shoulder, yet he pressed on. These were iron men on wooden rims. Though the Frenchman was in agony from his injured shoulder, he raced after the others at a reported 35 kilometers per hour. Catching the lead group of probably 27 riders, he then attacked several times, but to no avail. Seventy kilometers from the end of the stage, Ganna flatted. The current sportsmanlike unwritten rule about the race’s leader or major contender not being attacked while he is suffering a mechanical problem was not part of the racing ethos of the era.